SPP 2130:  Cultures of Translation in Early Modern Times

• Subject Area: Humanities ; Geosciences ; Social and Behavioural Sciences
• Term: since 2018
• Website: Homepage
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 360108296

The aim of the programme is the interdisciplinary study of the epoch-making significance of concepts and practices of translation as a central and ubiquitous cultural technique of early modern times (1450–1800). The European translation cultures are strongly rooted in the philological self-conception of the humanists. These cultures developed hand in hand with book printing and, in the context of increasing internationalization, branched out from the reception of ancient literature to other fields of knowledge. Linguistic, literary and medial translation movements are mutually dependent and, in their state of constant reciprocity, develop a cultural dynamic. Growing trade relations led to the intensification and professionalization of translation all over Europe. Spurred on by Europe’s exponentiated multilingualism and territoriality, this development resonated worldwide by way of the two-way colonial channels of the early modern period. In the process, it interacted with translation cultures elsewhere, in turn bringing about reactions and sparking new developments within Europe. The Priority Programme 2130 poses questions about basic conceptions of society, perception patterns and communication forms that became established through translation practices from the fifteenth century onward and still have an impact today. It invites us to come to terms with the problems, opportunities and consequences of various forms of translation - including cultural translation - in an early phase of globalization to re-orientate the cultural sciences drawing on the current translational turn. Key aspects of the translation cultures of early modern times are to be systematically investigated in three sections. The first section, “Sign Systems and Medial Transformations”, is devoted to the relationships between translation and linguistic reflection, translation theory, the history of semiotics and the history of media. The second section, “Anthropology and Knowledge”, investigates the images of human being and gender, power structures, social structures and epistemic orders negotiated by the process of translation. Section three, entitled “Cultural Affiliations and Society”, focusses on inter- and transcultural translation phenomena arising from (spatial) boundary-crossing and, in many cases, performatively produced cultural contacts.

• DFG Programme: Priority Programmes
• International Connection: France, Israel, Poland, United Kingdom

Projects

• 17th Century German Song Culture as Translational Culture (Applicant Dröse, Astrid )
• Art and Crisis: Transnational and Interconfessional Translation Processes in the Visual Arts and Architecture in Great Britain (1603-1750) (Applicant Strunck, Christina )
• Cartography as translation: The map production of eighteenth-century French 'armchair geographers' (Applicant Dürr, Renate )
• Coordination Proposal Priority Programme 2130 "Cultures of early Modern Translation" (Applicant Toepfer, Regina )
• Cultural translation as multidirectional process - Roberto Nobili as missionary translator between cultures, religions and institutions (Applicant Flüchter, Antje )
• Early Modern cultures of translation in Wales: innovations and continuities (Applicants Parina, Elena ;  Poppe, Erich )
• Flows and Frictions: The Camondo Family as Cultural Translators between the Ottoman Empire and Europe in the Eighteenth Century (Applicant Fliter, Irena )
• Japan’s Translated Religion: Christianity, Transculturality and Translation Cultures in the 16th-17th Century (Applicant Triplett, Katja )
• Jewish Translation and Cultural Transfer in Early Modern Europe: Jewish-Christian Translation Cultures in the Context of the 18th-Century Pietist Mission to the Jews (Applicant Voß, Rebekka )
• Lucian in the Early Modern German Translation Culture (Applicant Fantino, Enrica )
• Mediterranean Nautical Cartography in Arabic and Ottoman Turkish: Islands or Gateways of Knowledge in the Sea of Transcultural and Translinguistic Translation Processes? (Applicant Brentjes, Sonja )
• Practices of Translation in the periphery of New Spain between evangelization and local indigenous jurisdiction in Spanish and Zapotec language (17/18 century). (Applicant Schrader-Kniffki, Martina )
• Scientific Knowledge and Western European Travel Writing on Africa in Translation, 1600-1820 (Applicant Martin, Alison )
• Scientific translations in France in the classical age. Functions, practices, actors of translations from English, German and Italian (Applicant Gipper, Andreas )
• The historical semantics of translation in German narrative literature of the early modern period: Translation - Knowledge - Narration (Applicant Werle, Dirk )
• Transfer Processes between East and West from an Actor-Centered Perspective: Salomon Negri as Translator and Cultural Broker between the Arab World and Latin Europe in the Late Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries (Applicant Häberlein, Mark )
• Translating German Mysticism: The Construction of a European Idea (Applicant Eusterschulte, Anne )
• Translation terroirs – East Asian and European maps between Language, Ritual and Space (Applicant Schäfer, Dagmar )
• Translational Anthropology. German 16th-Century Translations of Ancient Literature from the Perspective of Intersectionality Research (Applicant Toepfer, Regina )
• Translational Dimensions of French Encyclopaedism in the Age of Enlightenment (1680-1800) 2nd phase: „Transatlantic Knowledge Transfer and the Dynamics of Cultural Translation“: Textual Filiations, Cultural Transformations, (Post-)colonial Asymmetries (Applicants Greilich, Susanne ;  Lüsebrink, Hans-Jürgen )
• Verse Techniques in Translation. The Internationalization of German Poetics and Occasional Poetry of the 17th and 18th Century (Applicant Wesche, Jörg )
• Versio latina: Agents, Functions and Aims of the Translation of Early Modern Literature into Latin. (Applicant Wolkenhauer, Anja )

• Spokesperson: Professorin Dr. Regina Toepfer